


backyard to backyard [me and you]

by batty_lite



Series: me and you [1]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:41:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22212754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batty_lite/pseuds/batty_lite
Summary: May I tell you a secret?Wanting always hurts.Now you know something you didn't know before!            - Curious George, Daniel Mallory OrtbergTW/CW for a brief suicide mention.
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Series: me and you [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634302
Comments: 18
Kudos: 29





	backyard to backyard [me and you]

“My mom bought this giant clock for the living room, and it’s definitely haunted. It’s from Craigslist.”

Pete grabs at his ribs and Patrick jumps and swears under his breath, snickering.

Patrick’s bedroom is dark, and under a worn fleece blanket, a bubble of feverish young masculinity and childish infatuation as Pete presses his naked chest to Patrick’s worn t-shirt and laughs into his shoulder. Pete’s fingers trace the elastic waistband of his boxers and Patrick squirms, thinks of the empty cans of ‘Gansett hidden in the bottom of his closet and grins at the ceiling.

“What?” Patrick whispers.

Pete gropes at his ass through his underwear. “It’s a sleepover. What do you think boys do at sleepovers?”

He shoves at Pete’s hand, but he’s glowing, eyes glittering in the dark, and Pete wrinkles his nose, trips over his words around his smile when he says, half laughing, “I have a crush on you.”

“Gross,” Patrick says, but maybe he believes him for less than a second, and then the spike of self-esteem is gone and Patrick kisses him, or else he looks him in the eyes. Patrick doesn’t get it— Pete tastes of boyhood and toothpaste and Pete’s hands are firmer on his sides than girls he’s kissed before, but instead of being squeamish, he’s sweet on it. He gasps, listens to the low groan Pete makes in response, and pulls back, laughing.

“My mom’s room— is right there,” Patrick mouths, grinning, and Pete tackles him against the pillows and pins Patrick’s wrists over his head with one hand. Patrick tests the waters and kisses him.

“I’m serious,” Patrick whispers. “Do you want to tell my mom you’re here after eleven or should I?”

Patrick’s mouth is greasy and swollen and Pete’s rose-colored glasses are shattered. He sits up quickly on Patrick’s hips and shoves a hand under Patrick’s shirt, fingers wandering over soft skin, damp with sweat.

“I wasn’t going to do anything anyways,” Pete replies thickly. Patrick tells him something consoling in response, but Pete doesn’t hear it.

//

Patrick thinks that there can’t be a state worse than New Jersey, until he discovers Connecticut. The wind is cutting, and he would sell his soul for a tube of Chapstick, but instead he’s eating stale trail mix out of a bag too small to fit two fingers in outside of a Shell station. Pete’s proximity is intolerable, his hand on the small of Patrick’s back, his breath in Patrick’s ear. Pete touches the inside of his thigh, a hint of fingertips, and Patrick’s fist collides with his chest before he can think of it.

“Bitch,” Pete bites, too flustered to think of anything more insulting. He snatches the granola and pitches it to the asphalt.

“Get away from me,” Patrick grits out, but it lacks bite when Pete shoulders him into the side of the building and shoves his hips against the wall. He shoves at Pete’s ribs, and, “Seriously, fuck _off_!”  
Pete’s thumbs scrape against the pockets of his jeans, his fingernails digging into Patrick’s soft hips, and that’s it— Patrick swallows with deliberation and stares over Pete’s head, deflating when Pete raises one cautious eyebrow.

“Oh,” Pete breathes. His face pressed close to Patrick’s, Patrick can see the glint of a Cheshire-cat like grin just below his line of vision. Pete’s eyes are dark, rimmed with blue from long days and even longer nights. “You’re totally getting off on this.”

Pete folds his hand over the zipper of Patrick’s jeans. The heel of Pete’s hand pressed lightly to the head of Patrick’s erection, Patrick bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from thrusting into Pete’s fingers. His fingernail catches the brick of the wall behind them and he swears.

“Yeah, I just can’t wait to get my wet mouth around your fat dick,” Patrick snaps, and chokes when Pete surges against him, presses his open mouth to Patrick’s, and Patrick tastes blood. His own heart pounds in his chest, harder and faster when Pete swallows him whole, bottom lip dragging across Patrick’s chin. Patrick is lost and playing a losing game; he could cry with how much he wants, wants Pete to kiss him until he’s winded, but it’s awkward and ungentle and Patrick would slit his own throat before he cries in Pete’s arms.

Patrick puts his hands in Pete’s chest and shoves him backwards. “Don’t fucking touch me! Touch me again and we’ll see what fucking happens!”

Pete laughs and Patrick could kill him.

“Fuck, I hate you!” He’s so hard it hurts, and Pete is bent over laughing, and Patrick feels fluid burn the back of his throat. He’s going to vomit.

In the bathroom of the gas station, Patrick puts his head between his knees and blinks back tears. Sniffling, he gags and drools on the bathroom floor. He doesn’t feel better. He sits on the lip of the sink and wipes at his eyes until someone knocks on the door, and Patrick slinks back to the bus alone.

“Where’s Pete?” Patrick asks Andy.

“Some girls invited him out to dinner earlier,” Andy replies without looking up from his laptop.

“I’m going to bed,” Patrick says. In his bunk, Patrick strips himself of his pants, puts his face in his pillow, and tries to ignore the twisting feeling in his gut. He stares at the window above the door and wonders how small he’d have to make himself to fit through it.

//

“Can you roll the window down? I think I’m going to be carsick,” Patrick bemoans, and soaks in the silence of being ignored.

Pete tips his head back against Patrick’s thigh, eyes closed. “If you untied the shoe strings around my neck, my head would fall off,” he says. Patrick groans.

“Seriously, Pete,” Joe snaps. “Enough with the NyQuil.”

Patrick scowls and fists his fingers in Pete’s hair and contemplates ripping it out in chunks.

//

Pete makes himself sick in a parking lot after midnight. He calls his mom to tell her he’s quitting the band and coming home, and vomits out the open car door until headlights burn his retinas and someone is hauling him up by the elbows.

“Dumbest fucking thing you’ve ever done, Wentz,” they say. Pete frowns and pukes on his own shoes.

“You’re an insufferable, selfish cunt,” Patrick tells him when Pete climbs into his bunk days later to lay himself across Patrick and pretend to sleep.

“Dick. You’re supposed to love me,” Pete mumbles into the soft skin of Patrick’s stomach. He nuzzles at the crease of Patrick’s hip and Patrick shoves at Pete’s head.

Pete bites his stomach. Patrick stiffens.

“Get out,” Patrick announces. “Go find someone else to fuck with.”

Pete rolls over, props his head up on Patrick’s chest, and stares at Patrick through dark eyelashes. “We haven’t hung out in a week.” Like he doesn’t know why that is, as if Patrick’s been avoiding him.

He has.

Patrick slams the heel of his hand into Pete’s diaphragm without regret. Pete coughs and laughs.

“I’m fucking serious,” Patrick snaps. “Sleep somewhere else.” He shoves at Pete’s shoulders until he gives in and rolls out of Patrick’s bunk, sighing.

Patrick waits until he hears the door slam closed before he presses his fingers into the indentation of Pete’s teeth in his skin and arches into it, eyes fluttering. His phone buzzes.

 _sorry_ , Pete writes. The phone slides closed with a satisfying click and Patrick rolls to his side and stares at the wall until he’s comatose.

//

It blindsides them both when it happens. The hotel room reeks of cigarettes and the air conditioner won’t shut off. The bathroom light doesn’t work, so Patrick showers in the dark, and emerges from the cramped bathroom with a damp towel wrapped around his chest, wet hair adhered to his forehead.

Pete lies tucked up within the bedsheets, only his head and hands above the duvet. “We should get something to eat,” he says, and Patrick hums in response. He tugs on boxers and sweatpants in haste, overtly aware of Pete’s watchful eye. The silence in the room is elastic, pulled taut, and reaches a maximum tension when Pete reaches with his arms outstretched and brushes the pads of his fingers over the curve of Patrick’s spine. Patrick breathes in and Pete breathes out, loud in the dimly-lit space.

“I’m not really hungry,” Patrick says into the cold air, voice strained. Pete’s fingers dance over the flat of his back.

“Yeah.”

And then they’re kissing, and it’s difficult to discern which of them is the orchestrator, or if it’s telepathy, but Patrick stumbles forward, catches Pete’s chin in his hand, and collapses over him. The sound of the air conditioner drowns Pete’s sharp inhalation.

“Should— should we tell them we’re not going for dinner?”

“No,” Patrick snaps. “Kiss me.”

Pete does kiss him, on the mouth, his ears, each of his ribs, and the backs of his knees. Pete kisses him until his skin is slick with spit and sticky with come and Patrick comes with his mouth open and his eyes closed and Pete’s fingers in his mouth. The afterglow lasts for a week, and in the seven days following, Patrick thinks that his own problems are none of his business.

//

“Who was that girl?” Pete asks. He looks up from his cell phone from where he’s draped across the couch across from Patrick, knees barely touching in the center. “From last night?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Patrick replies easily. He doesn’t look up.

Pete drops the phone in his lap and stares at the top of Patrick’s head. “Are you gonna ask her out?”

“We just met.”

“So?”

“Why do you care?”

Pete sighs and gathers his phone and his books and the t-shirt they’ve been sharing and wanders off to sulk alone. Patrick feels a strange sense of pride before it all goes to mush and all that’s left is guilt.

//

“I dreamed you drowned,” Patrick says. “I was sitting on the edge of your mom’s pool, looking at the house, and I didn’t even turn around.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Pete snaps. He sits against the wall, picking at his fingernails and seething.

They only fight now, and if they aren’t fighting, they’re fucking, hips pressed together in gas station bathrooms and in cars and in their personal spaces. Pete smokes and drinks and brings girls back to the bus just so Patrick will kick them out and kiss him on the couch, too close to being caught. Patrick wears collared shirts and bandanas to hide the marks Pete leaves on his neck and thinks he might be in love, looks at Pete like he’s hung the stars and beats him up in parking lots just to feel Pete’s skin in his hands. The witnesses are strangely silent.

“I’m so in love with you,” Pete tells him, Patrick’s face to his pulsing chest. Pete slaps his ass lightly, and the room spins; the bed smells of Victoria’s Secret Heavenly and musty laundry and Patrick slows his breathing and wonders how he got so lucky.

//

“You’re going to kill each other,” Andy says, soft and serious. “Directly or indirectly.”

Patrick laughs and Pete stares at him like a wounded animal. “Can we just—,” Pete starts, before Patrick interrupts.

“Talk again and I’ll break your fucking nose.”

Andy scratches his face. “Jesus. Pete, go outside.”

“I’m not fucking doing anything!” Pete protests, but he closes the door softly on the way out.

On the sidewalk, a woman in a red dress offers him a cigarette, which Pete accepts with shaking hands. It hurts between his fingers and tastes of the faded pink shag carpet in his uncle’s basement. He feels the same way he did then; his brother’s fists in the back of his shoulders and the sound of his uncle cussing out his mother’s sister. She gave it back, though, “old bitch” against “useless fucking drunk.” Pete inhales offensive nostalgia and crosses his fingers over his cigarette and strains to remember that the good and bad will pass if he waits.

Pete can’t wait that long.

“I’m going to spend some time at my mom’s,” Patrick tells him when he steps outside.

“Okay.”

Pete follows him home and they spend the night in a hotel outside of Springfield. It’s more expensive than it should be, and Patrick lets Pete fuck him, suck him off, venerate him, until he’s bored with it, and Pete dangles himself off the cliff until his fingers start slipping.

They do it again in Patrick’s childhood bedroom the next morning, and Patrick won’t kiss him, instead stares at the cobwebs stuck to the ceiling and muffles his thoughts of self-commiseration with Pete’s choked gasps above him, and drowns out the sound of Pete’s hips against his thighs with his personal pity.

He cries at his mother later in the living room as she does her best to console a situation she doesn’t understand, and Patrick thinks that if he lost his teenage years to freeways and sleeping on stranger’s living room carpets, he can make it all up now, one tantrum at a time.

//

The show sucks. It’s the worst show he’s played in years and Patrick drowns the show and his career in alcohol at the hotel bar. He puts his head in his hands and stares at the ice in his glass and thinks vehemently that if he disappeared today, no one would come looking for him.

And then like a phantom limb, or a conjuring, a hand winds itself around Patrick’s bicep, and it could be anyone, but it stings. Patrick finds himself thoroughly unsurprised.

“I’m not magic,” Pete says from behind him, a touch too befitting. “I paid your driver fifty bucks.”

“Just sit down.”

Pete does sit, and takes off his jacket, the universal code for planning to stay awhile, and Patrick stifles his anger long enough to ask, “Do you want something to drink?”

“I’m taking a break from drinking,” Pete replies lightly, and then, “I went to your show.”

“The show was shit,” Patrick spits.

Pete shrugs noncommittally. “It wasn’t your best.”

Patrick would prefer to be angry, except that Pete’s gratuitous honesty is a breath of fresh air, and maybe his insides soften, even if his fingers still feel like ice. He still hasn’t looked Pete in the eyes. “Everyone hates it,” he says.

“Sometimes you have to suck.”

It starts with one drink. Patrick sways him into it, makes him take a sip of his own drink, and Pete admits it’s good, even if it really just tastes like the inside of Patrick’s mouth. The rest are indulgences, and nowhere near as good as the first. It’s smooth alcohol, but it still feels like damp basements and comedy clubs and Patrick’s bedroom, more and more so as Patrick loses his vapid character to Michter’s and backslides, right back into Pete’s arms.

The elevator doors slide closed and Patrick fists his hands in Pete’s shirt and drags him down to meet his mouth before he can think about it. Pete doesn’t flinch; there’s no asking that they should do this somewhere less public, just Pete’s fingers sliding into the waistband of Patrick’s dress pants and Pete’s tongue against his teeth.

“I don’t why I’m doing this,” Patrick says, and the floor slides slightly under him. “I’m sorry, I fucking missed you, I miss me, too.”

Pete hands creep up the front of his shirt, and Pete’s mouth slides over his easily. “Yeah, yeah,” Pete slurs between flicks of his tongue between Patrick’s teeth.

The elevator dings and Pete wraps his fingers around Patrick’s wrist, handcuffs with no trick release, and lets Patrick drag him down the hallway to a vacant hotel room. Pete’s mouth is hot on his face while Patrick fumbles with the key card and the door, but Patrick can’t bring himself to be annoyed in the slightest. When he finally slams the door closed behind them, latches the deadbolt and throws himself into Pete’s arms, it feels like drowning and then breaking the surface. It feels like swallowing air.

Patrick gets stuck in his shirt when Pete slides it off his shoulders, and Pete is staring at him cloudy eyes and his lips parted, full of frantic want and dizzy from alcohol, and Patrick is suddenly struck with the uneasy realization that Pete is so much drunker than he is.

“I’m too drunk for this,” Patrick lies, and laughs. He’s drunk on Pete’s company and Pete’s hands are warm on Patrick’s waist and he hasn’t felt this desirable, this doted on, in months.

“Doubt it, I’ve seen you drink,” Pete groans, laughing. “I’m drunk, too.”

Patrick abruptly collides with the realization that he’s been stifling a failing career with alcohol, and he’s irreparably fucked over if he douses it with motherfucking Pete Wentz, too— but denial is a hell of a drug, and if he’s going to dose himself once more before he quits, it’s going to be one for the books.

Patrick wraps frail arms around Pete’s shoulders and kisses him, and it tastes like New York sours and seltzer water. He grinds his erection against Pete’s thigh and grits out, “Let me fuck you.”

Pete’s laugh is bitter, dislodged from between his ribs. “No.” The silence drenches the room, the only sound being the slick slide of Patrick’s mouth against his own. “I’ll suck you off.”

And so Patrick ends up on his back against the sheets, Pete’s tongue against his cock. Pete presses two fingers against him, cold with lube, and Patrick throws his head back against the ugly throw pillows and begs for more until Pete’s tongue finds his fingers. Pete pulls him apart with thumbs and his tongue and a catalogue of desperate noises until he comes, too far gone to care when Pete slides into him just to get off; instead, he pulls Pete’s face to his and whispers, “oh my God,” against his forehead.

Pete stays the night, and Pete fucks him in the morning. Patrick closes the blinds and checks the deadbolts in the door and crawls back into the slept-in sheets, brushes his fingers through Pete’s happy trail and whispers in his ear, “Wanna ride you, please.”

Patrick straddles his hips and sinks onto his cock with intent, knees tucked neatly under him, and thinks that the splintering feeling between his shoulders is secondary. Pete holds him steady with rough fingertips on his hips, and Patrick sighs with satisfaction, feels Pete’s sides under his palms. Mouth dry with apprehension, he shifts his weight; Pete reaches above his head, fists a hand in his own hair, and—

“No, no,” Patrick stutters, panicking. He grabs at Pete’s wrists and pulls them back to his thighs. Embarrassed, he stares at Pete’s chest, the thin film of sweat there, and mutters, “I don’t— just please touch me.”

Pete’s reply has no words, instead he runs his hands over Patrick’s thighs, content to watch Patrick work himself on his cock until he’s asking for more. Patrick makes demands in bed, a hot mess of obscenities and please, so Pete snaps his hips up on the same breath as Patrick sinks down and watches Patrick lurch towards him and hiccup on Pete’s name.

Pete grabs for him, murmurs, “Patrick, Patrick, Patrick, flip over, I wanna—”

It’s an ungainly maneuver, but they figure it out like they figure most things out, with Patrick’s thighs around Pete’s waist and Pete’s face in his chest. Patrick brushes the hair off Pete’s forehead and pulls Pete’s face to the damp skin of his neck with his arms crossed over Pete’s shoulders. Pete fucks him rough and arrhythmic and Patrick feels a little less like the victim with every drag of Pete’s chest over his cock.

Patrick crushes his mouth to Pete’s when he comes, bites out “please, baby, come on,” and Pete falls apart then and there, teeth scraping together and Patrick’s labored breaths against his tongue. They’re inseparable in the aftermath; Patrick buries his face in Pete’s armpit and thinks to himself that his throat seems looser, his knees less wobbly.

“I want you to stay,” Pete says softly. He curls into Patrick’s side, head on Patrick’s chest, and touches Patrick’s hair with gentle fingers.

“Yeah,” Patrick replies, because he doesn’t know what else to say. The afterglow is wearing off and Patrick wants to cling to it desperately, much like he had wrapped his forearms around Pete’s neck as Pete had fucked him hard and fast and Patrick had felt like he was holding on for his life.

“You know,” Patrick says after a minute. “I was gonna be like, ‘ugh, _Gabe_ ,’ just to really piss you off.”

Pete laughs and brushes Patrick’s forelock to his temples. “Oh, gross, fuck you,” he says fondly, and Patrick glows.

“Ugh, fuck me, you’re _so big_ ,” Patrick teases, pulls a face and bites his lip. Pete cackles, sound ricocheting off the walls and plaster ceiling, and rolls off of him, presses his thumbs into the dimples above Patrick’s ass, and ends Patrick’s life with one kiss, his tongue in Patrick’s mouth and his teeth biting into Patrick’s lower lip.

//

Patrick has a therapist. A real life, LA therapist with a leather couch and cat-eye glasses. He feels like a fraud, like Emily should be biding her time listening to real LA celebrities with real problems. She always wants to talk about the Pete thing, and how Patrick’s feeling, and seems to possess a wealth of understanding on a realization that Patrick himself has not reached.

“And it was a one-time thing?” She asks. The corner of Patrick’s mouth twitches downward, and Emily says, with practiced patience, “Okay, so not a one-time thing,” and then, “So what do you think?”

Patrick doesn’t know what to think, hasn’t had a straight thought since Pete had traipsed back into his life and put his warm hands up the front of Patrick’s shirt. “I don’t think it’s just sex,” Patrick says quickly, and feels his face flush pink.

Then what is it? What does it mean when Pete’s hands wander over Patrick’s skin like he needs it to breathe, sweet but firm enough that Patrick feels sick with it? What does it mean that Patrick had choked on his own spit when Pete kissed him goodbye in the doorway the weekend before, bringing their hips together with a calculated confidence, a forearm across the small of his back? And what did it mean that Patrick had let him tangle their fingers together above his head and let Pete fuck him, rough and sloppy, and Patrick had felt like he could die there, coveted and touched with deliberation? Sex doesn’t hurt like that.

“It’s like, body worship?” Patrick tries, and thinks _gross_ , but also thinks that even if he’s not good with words, he got this right.

“But it’s fun? And it feels good?”

“Yeah, but we haven’t talked about it, and I don’t want him to feel like—”

“But what’s more important right now? That you get something you want, that feels good, or Pete’s feelings?” Emily asks, and Patrick blinks and focuses on the floor, spots flooding his vision. His own feelings go unsaid.

//

Pete’s LA home is ridiculously large, much too big for any one person. The stairwells and closets are filled with stale air, and Patrick gets the feeling he’s being haunted, a shock of cold up his spine, even as Pete kisses his neck, his earlobes, his temples. It’s clear that Pete only lives between the kitchen, the living room, and his downstairs bedroom— the upstairs is untouched, clean beyond reasonable measure, but Pete shoves them into the guest bedroom at the top of the second stairwell anyways.

“Sorry, but I can’t do my bedroom,” Pete had mumbled into Patrick’s mouth between two hurried kisses. “I don’t know why, I just can’t.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Patrick had replied, fingers fumbling with the buttons on his collar. “Whatever.”

The expensive duvet on the bed of Pete’s guest bedroom is pulled up to Patrick’s nose. Well-fucked and nearly comatose, Patrick is high on his own orgasm and the familiar scent of Pete’s laundry detergent. Patrick lets his eyes flicker over Pete’s heaving body and glares at the ceiling.

“You know this doesn’t mean I want to get back together,” Patrick asserts, breaking the thin layer of silence in the room. He brushes his fingers through the hair at the back of Pete’s skull, peaked from being shoved against the pillow.

Pete stills and moves out of Patrick’s reach. “I know, you just want to hook up, and then I tell Andy and Joe and every other person that asks that we don’t talk.”

He stretches his arms over his head, teasing, all lean muscle and dark features. Patrick fixes him with a practiced cold look.

“You’re being dramatic.”

“Am I?”

Patrick blinks at him, still scowling. Pete stares at him with his jaw set, questioning, and Patrick feels naked and vulnerable, even under the duvet. He looks away.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that.”

“Then let’s not talk about it. I’m going to shower.”

Pete sucks him off in the shower and Patrick comes with one hand in Pete’s hair and the other fisted in his mouth, and it feels like a punishment. Pete doesn’t kiss him when Patrick wraps one hand around his cock loosely and pulls, and he doesn’t kiss him goodbye.

“Do you want anything? I have notebooks. I can send you stuff,” Pete says in the threshold of the doorway, hair still damp and shirtless. _Sex kitten_ , Patrick thinks angrily and he adjusts his sunglasses on his nose.

“No.”

//

“You don’t have to go back to the band, Patrick,” his mom says through the phone. Patrick frowns. “Even if you love him.” He loves him, not the band, and Patrick can feel his mother’s uncertainties oozing from the speaker of the phone.

“I don’t,” Patrick replies, voice strained. “I don’t know.”

“Did you talk about it?” She asks, and Patrick stares at the ceiling.

“We don’t— we don’t talk about us. We don’t talk like— like that.” Brutal honesty is not his strong suit. They don’t talk like that; they don’t talk about anything. Pete divulges his affections and anxieties in words and Patrick sits quietly and leans into Pete’s hands and trusts that he knows what it takes for Patrick to give him that. And it works, but the band is bigger than them, even if Patrick forgets, and he forgets.

“I wouldn’t understand,” his mother says quietly, teasing.

Patrick wants to protest, like a child, but instead he rubs his eyes with his fingertips and says, “—yeah.” They’re quiet for a moment, until Patrick says quickly, “Can I tell you something?”

There’s a noise on the other end of the phone. His mother hums and says, “Of course.”

Patrick wonders time and time again if his mother knows the intricacies of their relationship, beyond the public declarations of love and meaningful glances. Patrick inhales and says before he can stop himself, “We’ve never been friends. I don’t know how to be friends with him.”

His mother’s words are understanding, free of judgement. “I think you can figure it out. If not, you know what happens.”

It’s strangely comforting to know that he can always go back to being a failure, to fighting and fucking with Pete, because he’s done it once before, and it wasn’t that bad.

//

“You know,” Pete says, with his hand in a bag of microwave popcorn. “In Ted Bundy’s second prison escape, he crawled through a vent in his ceiling and just, like, left.”

“I don’t think we should make criminals into celebrities.”

“You think he was a celebrity?”

“Yes.”

“He also jumped out of a second-story window and was totally fine— kind of badass,” Pete jokes and then laughs at himself.

Lounging across Pete’s enormous leather couch in a t-shirt and sweatpants, Patrick rolls his eyes and tries not to smile.

//

They get back together— the band, that is.

They go out for dinner, the four of them, and Patrick pulls him into the front seat of his car at the end of the night.

“You know if we’re gonna do the band,” Patrick tries, “Our little thing is over.”

“It’s gonna work out,” Pete tells him quietly. Patrick leans across the console to put his head on Pete’s shoulder and Pete rubs his shoulder thoughtlessly.

“Maybe,” Patrick replies. “You’ll be fine either way.”

“You will too, you know,” Pete says, and Patrick doesn’t reply. Instead, he stares out the windshield and watches two kids in the parking lot shove each other playfully. With the warmth of Pete’s shoulder bleeding into his temple, Patrick violently wishes he could do everything over again. One kid outside pushes the other against the door of a car, and Patrick shoves at Pete’s stomach, softer now, and laughs.

“That should be us,” Patrick jokes. Pete’s hand slides to his lower back, and Patrick kisses him without thinking. Pete’s teeth tug at his lower lip and the silence of the car is warm and gentle, instead of frightening and suffocating.

“I thought we weren’t doing this,” Pete whispers, breathless, his nose pressed to Patrick’s.

“You’ll have to keep reminding me,” Patrick says softly. He kisses Pete’s chin, rough under his lips, and he goes home alone.

//

It’s too easy to rebound with old routines. It’s too easy to invite each other out for drinks after long days, too easy to plan dinners with each other and overstay the welcome, too easy to slide into cabs together after shows. The thing about rules, Patrick thinks, is that maybe rules are meant to be broken.

So when they end up pressed together on a hotel bed too close to home, Oxnard or San Diego maybe, it feels like the only logical progression.

“Is this okay?” Pete asks. Patrick’s knee is in his armpit, his other leg thrown haphazardly around the back of Pete’s thigh. It’s a useless question, but Pete sounds nervous. He brushes a thumb over a piqued nipple and Patrick arches against him, asking.

Patrick laughs through his bliss. “Yeah, it’s so good.”

So Patrick steps on the accelerator and hopes it doesn’t stick to the floor.

//

There’s a show in Newport. Patrick is exhausted, but the show goes by with practiced perfection and Patrick wants nothing more than to drink a cocktail, alone, in his own hotel room, and sleep until eleven the next morning.

Patrick’s wants are irrelevant, though, because Pete runs up behind him and plasters himself to Patrick’s back as soon as everything is put away. The parking lot behind the venue is dark and empty except for a smattering of vacant cars, and Pete wraps his arms around Patrick’s stomach, kisses the soft spot under Patrick’s ear, and inhales the scent of Patrick’s hair.

“Hey,” Pete murmurs, and Patrick leans back against his chest, lets Pete’s arms hold him up.

“Hey,” Patrick quips in reply. “I’m going back to shower and sleep,” he says, but Pete’s hands are firm and he feels like warmth, and Patrick could be convinced to have his cocktail elsewhere.

“Ice cream’s still open,” Pete whispers against his ear, like Patrick isn’t already convinced of whatever Pete has to tell him. “I’ll buy.”

“Right,” Patrick says, and tries to sound annoyed. Pete exhales a laugh against his neck. “And then I’m going to sleep.”

“Of course, love.”

Pete keeps his promise, and they sit on the pier together, away from the few people still wandering around the shops on the wharf. Pete slips his shoes off and sinks his feet in the water; Patrick sits cross-legged next to him. Pete watches him eat ice cream off the end of a plastic spoon, and Patrick gives him a knowing smirk and leans into his chest.

The day had been hot, but it’s cooler now. Pete’s hoodie is wrapped around Patrick’s shoulders in the way Pete is wrapped around Patrick, arm draped across Patrick’s back, chin on Patrick’s shoulder.

Pete sucks on the end of his milkshake noisily and shakes the empty cup. “I would have married her,” he says, breaking the silence.

“Who,” Patrick says, teasing.

“You know who.” Pete presses his mouth to Patrick’s hairline.

Patrick lets his eyes fall closed. “No, you wouldn’t have. I know you didn’t love her.”

“You don’t marry who you love. You marry who gets you up in the morning.”

Patrick hums, thinking. “I don’t know if I’ve ever loved anyone,” he whispers, barely audible. He stares at his hands, notes the absence of a wedding band there, and turns to look Pete in the eyes. The corner of Patrick’s mouth twitches down when he says, “But if I were to ever love anyone, I know you’d be the only one.”

“Then marry me.”

“I’m not marrying you,” Patrick says softly. He leans into Pete’s shoulder and squeezes his eyes closed, swallows the lump in his throat. Pete kisses the top of his head and tightens his arm where it hangs around Patrick’s waist.

//

There’s a publicity event in Vegas, and Pete goes for the both of them. Patrick sleeps away the evening between expensive hotel sheets and patiently awaits his return, flickering in and out of consciousness.

Pete spooks him awake when he closes the door behind him and flips on the light. All tired eyes and hardened hands, Pete stares at him absently and says, “Hey, I should tell you— I fucked them all. And it didn’t matter because none of them were you.”

“I didn’t fuck any of them,” Patrick replies, voice soft. It’s cold in the room; the glittering lights from the city outside do nothing to warm them. “They weren’t you.”

Fingers trembling, Pete unbuttons his collar, and Patrick rolls over to face him, blinks, and asks, “Can you turn the light off?”

With the overhead light off, the gold band wrapped around Patrick’s finger reflects the warm light from the lamp on the nightstand. He’s naked, sheets kicked off the bed sometimes during sleep, and half hard. Pete looks at him with dark eyes and Patrick wets his mouth, sticky tongue over swollen lips, and says, “God, you’re a tease. Take off your pants and I’ll let you fuck me.”

Pete fucks into him slow and firm, in and out like Patrick breathes, and they move like that, surf against the sand. Pete inhales through his nose and exhales hot and humid against Patrick’s neck. His cotton dress shirt is soaked with sweat between them, the top buttons carelessly undone, and Patrick fists his hands into the collar and pulls Pete closer, buries Pete’s cock further inside himself, and lets Pete worship him.

“One day,” Pete gasps, wet tongue slick in the folds of Patrick’s ear, “I’ll get you off with just my voice.” He pins Patrick’s wrists above his head with one hand, shoves Patrick’s knee to his chest with the other. He’s exhausted, but it’s a game Patrick refuses to lose, vibrating under Pete’s weight, all panting breaths and strangled moans.

Pete comes with his mouth wet across Patrick's cheekbone, grinds his dick deeper into Patrick and makes a low noise. Patrick kisses his neck and rakes his fingernails down Pete's back, under his shirt pushed up his to armpits.

“Love,” Patrick breathes into his hair, “I’ll do a—anything for you.”

Pete slides out after a minute, and bites at Patrick’s neck while he replaces his cock with his fingers, twists them just the right way. “Come on, baby,” Pete whispers, “Come for me,” and Patrick does, because he’d bend over backwards for Pete, he’s Pete’s, and they were made for each other in some perverse way. Patrick doesn’t try to understand anymore, he’s pliable in Pete’s hands, and Pete kisses the mark he’s sucked into Patrick’s neck and touches his face fondly.

“I brought you a bottle of wine,” Pete murmurs. Pete kisses his face like it tastes of sugar and fumbles with the buttons on his shirt. He throws to the shirt to the floor and mumbles, voice catching on affection, “Come on, let’s clean up and I’ll open it for you.”

Patrick clings to him in the shower, forearms wrapped as tightly as possible around Pete’s ribs. He rests his face on Pete’s shoulder and listens to the water on the his skin, the walls, the floor, and the wet sound of the kisses Pete leaves on the nape of his neck. Eyes closed, Patrick rocks them back and forth and tries to forget there’s a world on the other side of the door.

Pete rakes his fingers through Patrick’s soaked hair and runs the other hand up Patrick’s spine, barely touching.

“I’m a fucking train wreck,” Patrick says, eyes shining, and Pete grins at him, dripping wet.

“Wine will help,” Pete replies smoothly. Patrick reaches behind him to turn the water off.

Pete pours them both a glass with shares from the hotel cabinet. Naked and tucked under the sheets, Patrick watches the smooth curve of his ass and smiles gently when Pete hands him a share and slides into bed beside him. Pete loves him like a child, like it’s a hobby, a summer fling that lasts for years and years, and Patrick takes what he can get.

//

Patrick messes with the switchboard and shakes his head, interrupted by Pete’s hand on his shoulder.

“I’m done for the day,” Pete says, standing over him. “I’m going home.”

“Okay,” Patrick replies.

“Are you staying?”

“Yeah.”

Pete kisses him softly, his thumb on Patrick’s throat, and he tastes like raspberry seltzer, a sweetness laced with stoicism and self-discipline. There’s no room for horseplay in their lives anymore; everything is calculated and refined, and Patrick wipes dust off the dashboard of his expensive car later and thinks privately that with all factors considered, he got the better end of the deal.

Pete suggests, “You should come over Friday. No one will be home,” and Patrick lays his face on Pete’s stomach and feels Pete’s chest expand against his temple.

“Okay,” Patrick says again.

**Author's Note:**

> @battylite on Tumblr. 
> 
> A million times thank you to keshi, Matt Maltese, and Phoebe Bridgers for getting me through 2019.
> 
> Edits made: 1/12/2020  
> Edits made: 1/13/2020


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